Planning Commission Meeting   9/14/2021

All right, we are right at 5.30.

Oh, great.

I thought I was done.

Welcome to the October,

Alright, so this is going to be just a little bit different because this is the annual meeting of the Charlottesville Planning Commission happens every September and this is the opportunity where the commissioners are going to have the opportunity to vote on a new slate of officers and the meeting will change hands as soon as that occurs.

Just to start out, I've got a few overview messages.

For those of you who may be on the phone and can't see the name, I'm Missy Creasy.

I'm the Assistant Director of Neighborhood Development Services, and so I staff the commission and

Make sure that we keep things rolling with the commission.

A couple of announcements this evening.

First one is for raising of hands during the meeting.

When the chair calls for the public input sections, right prior to that, if there are any hands that are up, those will all be lowered.

And then as soon as the chair calls for public engagement, folks will have the opportunity to raise their hands at that point.

And that gives everyone an even playing field for getting in line for speaking.

And please note that we will have an opportunity for everyone to speak definitely during the public hearing.

We did want to clarify that we have two pretty large items this evening and so we're going to do matters from the public until six o'clock when we receive our council majority and then we will stop the matters of the public and do that following our discussions later this evening.

That'll allow us to get to the public hearing

and then work through the work session item and then there'll be an opportunity for public comment at that time.

So just some logistics there to help and the raising of hands that's already listed in the chat for all participants to read and I'll put some additional information in there concerning how we're handling matters from the public as the meeting progresses.

But at this time, typically the commission would give reports, but it seems like it would make sense to move forward to the annual meeting part and then backtrack to the reports if all the commissioners are okay with that.

All right, seeing lots of head nods.

Sorry about that.

We will start the annual meeting by having a report of our nominating committee.

And the nominating committee is composed of two commissioners who have been on the commission more than one year.

And this year, our chair nominated Ms.

Dow and Mr. LeHindro to be the nominating committee.

Thank you.

And Tania, I'll defer to you if you'd like to give the report.

If you have it already pulled up, I will let you move forward.

It's coming right off the top of my head.

But first, I want to thank Chair Mitchell for two years of excellent service.

He has been a steady hand on the tiller through some tough times, and we owe him a huge debt of gratitude.

All right, well, thank you.

Thank you for that presentation there, Mr. LeHindro and Ms.

Dow.

This is the opportunity to call for any additional nominations, if there are any at this time, from the commissioners, of course.

All right, seeing none, I believe that we could go ahead and call for a vote.

One of our commissioners would need to

I so call for a vote.

And I second.

All in favor say aye.

Aye.

Raise your hand.

All opposed.

Likewise, seeing none opposed, it carries unanimously.

Thank you very much Lyle and Liz for your willingness to serve.

All right, wonderful.

So we are going to turn the time over to Chair Solla-Yates, who will take us through the regular meeting and the rest of the meeting to come.

and we will be supporting him throughout this endeavor this evening.

Thank you very much and Chair Mitchell for your two years of excellent service and for this honor and attempting to follow you.

A remarkable opportunity, thank you.

Let's talk about presentations.

I'm so used to always being unmuted that I need to unmute now.

So this has been a Parks and Rec month for me.

I think I've had five different engagements, meetings with Parks and Rec.

And actually, Jody, I'm going to let you talk about what we did this weekend, because you seem to have so much fun doing that.

So I'll leave that to you.

But Jody and I spent the weekend with a couple of folks from Parks and Rec.

I want to talk about one thing that's very important to us because this is what we do, and that's the capital improvement budget for Parks and Rec.

The direction that we've been given in Parks and Rec, and I think most of the departments have been given, is not to ask for anything new in the capital improvement budget unless it is an emergency or unless it is an absolute need.

We've got at least four things that fall into that category.

The first is the drainage in McIntire Park.

The drainage in McIntire Park is actually creating a violation of the Department of Environmental Quality, their standards.

And it's also causing water to run off into my favorite waterways.

So that is going to be a top priority.

And that's going to be about $350,000 that we're going to be asking council to approve.

But this is a must do.

We are in violation if we don't fix that.

The next topic is honesty pool.

That's the pool at B Park.

Been out of use for a couple of years.

And we think it's going to take about $400,000 to bring that back online.

So we're asking

that when we look at this, I'm asking my colleagues on the commission to give that a priority.

The next is Oakwood Cemetery.

There's a lot of water erosion there and standing water there as well that we need to address.

That's gonna be about 52,000 bucks.

And the last must do thing is a comprehensive mass plan.

We haven't had anything like that in a number of years and our future is going to be relentless for Parks and Rec unless we do that and that's going to be about 150,000 bucks.

The last thing that Jody is going to talk about a little bit is an interesting project that we've got a lot of VDOT funding for that's sitting there and already been spent and they're just waiting for us to put our money in as well.

Quick word about the pools.

Washington Park, as you know, is no longer open for the season.

Crow is open.

And Smith, we hope, will be open by the late fall.

So good news, it's going to be coming back online.

The city market has been very active.

That's great.

The athletic programs, they have been busier this year than they were in 2018.

Not 2020, but 2018.

busier this year than pre-COVID, so that's good news.

In spite of that, we're low on staffing.

We're missing a lot of key folks.

A lot of key folks where the rubber meets the road, but a lot of key leadership positions as well.

First line, mid-level and senior management.

And unfortunately, we recently announced that Mr. Brown, Todd Brown,

is going to be leaving Parks and Rec, and he's going to Fredericksburg School.

Lots of good things going on, but we just need to get some people on board.

Thank you.

Ms.

Good evening commissioners and the rest of the city.

I have not been to a meeting, but I do have an update for the CDBG task force.

August 16th HUD approved the environmental review and the traffic safety signs have been ordered.

So that is definitely a good update.

And then I will be attending the school CIP committee meeting, which will be Tuesday, October 26th from nine to 11 virtually.

Yes, I have not been to meetings yet, but I'm going to attend the Citizens Transportation Advisory Committee meeting tomorrow.

Mr. Lehendre?

I have attended the BAR meeting of August 17th.

At that meeting, we had one item, a very important item, a new apartment building behind Preston Place.

that was deferred for more design consideration.

And then we had two items receive certificates of appropriateness.

For my other committee, that is the Tree Commission, and they're meeting right now.

They clearly don't want me to be at their meeting for some reason.

They keep doing this to me.

And as for the walk in the woods, I'm going to ask Hosea if he wouldn't mind sharing that experience with you.

Hosea, I was in the back of the line.

I didn't catch much of what the discussion was in the front.

Well, we, the leader of the Parks and Recreation Board asked the couple of key counselors and a couple of key council candidates and a representative from VDOT and Jody and me to join them.

And just to walk through what is now and what once completed will be the Medically Trail.

And that trail begins in Greenbrier and runs all the way through

all the way through just behind Whole Foods and just behind the old giant and then back into Greenbrier again.

Much of the work has been done, much of the work has been funded by VITA.

I think they've got another 750,000 bucks that they're going to add to what they're doing

And the only thing that we've got to add to that is another 650,000 bucks.

And it's something that's very near and dear to the hearts and minds of the Parks and Rec team.

I know that Vic and his team and Mr. Brown would love to have it done.

And the gentleman who manages all of our trails, he's dying to get it done.

The question is where we get the money to do it.

And it may be that we can get it squeezed into this capital improvement budget, this cycle.

Thank you.

Ms.

Yeah, quick one for me today, I guess.

It's been a pretty slow month.

We did have a meeting of the Thomas Jefferson Planning District Commission.

There we reviewed the draft home investment partnership report to HUD of how each of us have been spending our funds.

And we've been spending it on essentially AHIP and Habitat for Humanity down payment assistance.

And we reviewed the draft solid waste plan

which kind of set the plan for how the region will manage its solid waste, which is recycling and trash.

So as you guys may have heard, there's been some challenges in the recycling industry lately, a lot less recycling being taken and successfully recycled.

So a little more emphasis on the reduce and reuse side of that for now.

And that's essentially what we covered in our last CJPC meeting.

The Charlottesville Plans Together Steering Committee met on September 1st.

Two and a half hours of content that would be very familiar to you.

The feedback from the team was very similar and I thought helpful.

The Housing Advisory Committee Policy Subcommittee met on September 10th to discuss how to move forward with housing since we still do not have a housing coordinator on staff and discussed some ideas on how to do that but made no decisions.

Moving forward to the full agenda.

Thanks, Lyle, and congrats on being the chair now.

I think it was problem.

Yeah, no problem.

Yeah, I mean, there's a lot going on, obviously, at UVA.

I was going to hit some highlights.

for us right now.

In process, you know, we continue with our grounds plan update, as well as that affordable housing initiative.

I don't have any specifics to report on either of those, but they've been, you know, hard at work, the consultant teams with that and reaching out

to the community and to the Albemarle planning establishment, the city government, things like that with the grounds plan and then the affordable housing is kind of on its own track as well.

So that's going along.

The one thing that popped into my knowledge that I didn't know about that

The health system is doing a strategic plan and they've got a website.

So that's the hospital and such.

And they have a website that I was gonna stick into the comment section.

Sorry, Mr. Palmer, we lost your audio.

Have I been on mute this whole time or did I?

I must have clicked it accidentally instead of the comment box.

Where did you lose me when I was saying the strategic plan?

Strategic plan.

Yeah.

I added a link to their website where they're collecting public comment.

They have two areas that the community would probably be more interested in.

One's community and public equity, and the other is patient experience.

And I think those are two areas where people may want to comment.

And then in terms of just general stuff around grounds, I mean, construction-wise, Ivy Corridor, utility work is beginning over there.

The three buildings that are kind of in design continue to be on various levels of design.

That's the Data Science Institute, the Hotel and Conference Center, as well as the Institute for Democracy.

You might notice, as you drive by, Alderman Library is starting to come out of the ground.

They removed the new stacks, as they call them, and are adding an addition for the 21st century onto that building, and that's starting to take shape more and more.

And then finally, there's a Board of Visitors meeting next week on September 23rd and 24th.

There's a live stream of it, I think, for anybody who cares to listen to that.

And also on the 24th, just a reminder, there's a Friday night football game at Scott Stadium.

So you may notice heavy traffic on Friday.

Thank you.

NDS report.

I wanted just to give a reminder of the meetings that we have coming up over the next couple of weeks, just to make sure everyone has those set.

September 21st, which is next Tuesday.

We have a work session starting at five o'clock and it'll be our continued review of the comprehensive plan.

We'll kind of take off from where we land this evening and then talk further about some of the items that we had at the last meeting that we were discussing.

We are currently scheduled at our regular meeting on October 12th for the comprehensive plan public hearing.

And we have a placeholder on commissioners calendars at this point in time on October 21 as we're trying to manage the agendas the best that we can in October, knowing that we've got some items that will have a lot of feedback and making sure that we can

accomplish those in a good time frame.

But I wanted to take the rest of the time and turn it over to our new director, James Freese, to give us an introduction.

So you guys can hear a little bit about him and we'll kind of go from there.

Good evening, everybody.

I don't want to take too much of your time because I know you have a busy agenda ahead of you, but I'm very excited to be here.

As Missy said, my name is James Freese, new director for NDS.

Today is my second day, so still finding my feet and learning my way around the building.

But what I'd really like to do is really find some time to meet with all of you in person.

There's a lot of great work going on right now, and I'm hoping for an opportunity to get to talk with each of you about what we have going on, and I'm excited to get involved in it.

So until we have an opportunity to talk, I'm looking forward to the conversation tonight.

Thank you, sir, and welcome.

Thank you.

Thank you, Chair Solla-Yates.

And at this time, if you would like to address the Planning Commission on matters not on the formal agenda, please click your raise hand icon.

Or if you're joining us by phone, press star nine, and we'll call on you in the order of hands raised and you'll have three minutes for comment.

Looks like we do have one hand raised.

Benjamin Heller.

Mr. Heller, you're on with the Planning Commission.

Hi, thanks for having me.

I'm calling from McIntyre Park and I can report happily it is not flooded.

It seems well-drained, so good news for now.

I just wanted to chime in on an environmental question, you know, related to the comprehensive plan.

And it's just, I have a concern about

whether there's not more analysis potentially required for that, to know whether the impacts are going to be as positive as we want them to be or potentially, you know, fall short.

And, you know, I think it just, you know, we all know that if we were building a city from scratch, you know, with the goal of minimizing greenhouse gas emission, we would build dents.

But we're not building from scratch.

And the impact is going to depend on decisions that economic agents make, partly in response to your ordinance.

And I just fear that there hasn't been any modeling of that decision making or really any indication that the ordinance is going to constructively shape those decisions.

So, for example, it matters if a new multiplex is on vacant land.

requires a teardown because there are hundreds of kilograms of embodied carbon per square meter in existing structures.

So if you tear down, you start in the hole.

And it matters who moves in.

If you mostly get city workers who would otherwise be living in Flouvan and commuting, and their new homes are LEED Platinum, that's totally a big win.

But if you get mostly New Yorkers who are living in efficient high-rises and taking the subway to work, and who now come here and have two cars and commute out to Albemarle from a building that a developer slapped up with

you know, 12 CRHVAC and gas furnaces, that's a huge loser.

So I just wonder what analysis has been done to know which it's likely to be.

I mean, when I look at the census origin destination tables, I don't see a ton of commuters from far outlying areas, but I would like to know, like, are they there for economic reasons or just preferences?

And we do have 6,000 city dwellers who work in Albemarle.

So, you know, are the policies gonna push in the right way?

What are the disincentives you'll inflict on tear downs?

What rules will you have to make sure the new buildings are highly efficient?

Are you going to impose parking maximums to make sure those multiplexes can't be filled up with two-car families?

And are the affordable unit eligibility rules going to favor in-city workers?

And when it comes time to impose these kinds of rules, are we going to hear again how the city that's now mighty enough to redo the whole built environment is suddenly just a little town council rendered sadly powerless by the Dillon rule?

Because it feels like sometimes you guys want to be Superman, and then sometimes it's back to Clark Kent when you're dealing with developers.

Thank you very much.

Moving to the next item on the agenda, I believe we're talking about the consent agenda.

I move to approve the meeting minutes from March 30, 2021 as amended, and that includes the revision added by Mr. Soler-Yates.

All four, please raise your hand.

I believe that's everyone.

That passes unanimously.

And I believe we have four minutes until our joint council session.

I suggest that we take a four minute break.

Relax.

and I believe we're back.

I count two councilors.

I think we have three.

I see Councilor McGill, Payne.

Oh, no, four.

I believe we are in order then.

I believe I see something like I called to the,

Charlottesville Planning Commission to order.

Council is in order.

Thank you.

We'd like to discuss an application for a change of zoning at 240 Stribling for a planned unit development.

Item number ZM20-00002 requesting rezoning as well as a

Waiver for to disturb critical slopes, as well as a new agreement that we'll hear more of information about.

Yes, thank you, Chair.

Commissioners, tonight you're going to hold a public hearing for requested PUD at 240 Stripling Avenue and make a recommendation to City Council on the request and the related critical slope waiver.

Southern Development, on behalf of the landowner,

Belmont Station, LLC, has submitted an application seeking a zoning map amendment to change the zoning district clarification of 240 Stribling Avenue from the existing multi-zoned lot R2 residential two family along the Stribling portion in R1S residential small lot on the remainder of the lot to plan unit development subject to proffered development conditions.

The proposed PUD development plan calls for a density not to exceed 15 dwelling units per acre, roughly 20 rows of townhomes, three multifamily buildings designated as condominiums, two single-family attached dwelling units, a use matrix that allows residential and related uses such as single-family attached townhouses, single-family detached, two-family dwellings, and multifamily.

family day home and residential treatment facility up to eight residents, non-residential uses such as house of worship, ball fields, and swimming pools.

The use matrix prohibits such uses as nursing homes, animal shelters, libraries, and gas stations.

The use matrix allows parking garages, surface parking lots under and above 20 spaces, and temporary parking facility, all as ancillary uses.

15% of the dwelling units constructed on site shall be affordable dwelling units, two central greens or open spaces, preservation of existing wooding areas between the development and Moore's Creek, total open space of 4.76 acres or roughly 41.9% of the total site, a shared use public path connecting the development

to Moores Creek built to city standard detail TR1, four new city standard roads, a public road connection to Morgan Court, six private roads built to city standards for rear loading of townhouses, on-street parking, structured parking for the three multifamily buildings to be provided within each building, dwelling units within the development will have porches and balconies,

Zero minimum setback for structures within the development and five foot setbacks for structures adjacent to the property outside the development.

Minimum building height of 55, excuse me, maximum building height of 50, 55 feet except for lots one through seven.

These lots would have a maximum height of three stories.

Subtle variation and massing wall openings and color will be used on the dwelling units to reduce

Repetition, widening of Stribling Avenue along the north side of the property adjacent to the entrance road, a preliminary landscape plan with screening on the edge of the properties and general location of street trees, sheltered five-foot sidewalks along both sides of all public roads and one side of all private roads.

The project is being proposed in a 20-phase process.

In addition to the physical characteristics of the development plan, the applicant has also proposed a proper statement with the following condition.

15% of all dwelling units constructed on site will be affordable.

Affordable dwelling units per the proper will mean a dwelling unit reserved for occupancy by a household that pays no more than 30% of its gross income for housing costs, including utilities.

provided that the annual gross income of the household is 60% or less than the area median income for the city of Charlottesville.

Of the affordable dwelling units, a minimum of 30% will be reserved for rentals to low to moderate income households for a period of at least 10 years.

Of the affordable dwelling units, a minimum of 30% will be reserved for ownership by low to moderate income households

for a period of at least 30 years.

During construction, the four-cell affordable dwelling unit shall be constructed incrementally such that at least five dwelling units shall be either completed or under construction pursuant to a city-issued building permit prior to the issuance of every 30th building permit for non-affordable four-cell dwelling units.

In addition to the required

It requested rezoning of 240 Stribling Avenue to a PUD.

The applicant is also requesting a waiver to the critical slope requirements.

Per Section 34-1120B and 34-516C, this request must be heard simultaneously with the rezoning request by Planning Commission.

14.3% of the total site

are designated as critical slopes per the city code.

The applicant is requesting to disturb 41.7% of these slopes.

The applicant is proposing to disturb these slopes to provide the public access trail to Morris Creek, public road connection to Morgan Court, building envelopes for two of the three multifamily buildings, five of the townhomes, and one of the private roads plus the stormwater infrastructure.

Staff Planning Commission and City Council has received numerous comments related to this project, and the applicant has held a number of community events.

These comments can be found in the staff report and as attachment E within that report.

One of the main concerns is the pedestrian infrastructure of Stridland Avenue.

To provide more information on this and to give an update on the process, you will now hear from the Director of Economic Development, Mr. Chris Engle.

Okay.

Good evening.

Thank you, Matt.

My name is Chris Ingle.

I'm the director of economic development for the city, but tonight I'm here on behalf of the city manager.

A couple of months ago, the city manager and I were approached by the applicant developer of the 240 Stripling

PUD to determine if the city would be interested in considering any alternative funding approaches to address the pedestrian infrastructure needs that were just referenced on Scribbling Avenue that's near this proposed PUD.

The approach that we're going to outline for you today models a previous approach the city has used for economic development projects thus

My involvement as well as the city attorney to negotiate this infrastructure funding agreement.

I do want to be clear that this agreement is not part of the rezoning request, but it does impact the area nearby and certainly of interest to many in the neighborhood.

As proposed, it is a separate agreement entered into by the parties to help facilitate a solution to the needs in a more timely manner than the typical CIP process may allow.

In its simplest form, this agreement stipulates that the developer provides up to $2 million in funds to construct the needed improvements.

And that is likely in a timeframe that is contemporaneous to the PUD development to create some efficiencies there.

The city will then repay those funds to the developer over a period of years based solely on the incremental increase in real estate value generated by the PUD project.

So as the new units arrive and are assessed, that increase is what is used to pay back the developer for the $2 million that is essentially provided upfront to do the improvements in advance and in conjunction with the new PUD.

So to be clear, this project has not been designed, it has not been engineered, has not been bid or estimated.

It's been estimated but has not been bid by a formal contractor.

So many of the detailed questions that people might have as to what it might look like, you know, just can't be answered as of this moment.

So there's obviously work to be done should this agreement and the PUD move forward.

But a few of the details that you may be interested in,

The agreement covers sidewalks and associated utility and stormwater infrastructure for approximately the length of Stripling Avenue from its intersection at JPA to the city boundary.

A preliminary survey and preliminary engineering have been completed by the developer.

Those are current and recent activities that have been done in preparation for this.

That did result in a cost estimate for these improvements.

in the range of $1.5 to $1.6 million.

Again, this project has not been designed or engineered.

These figures are likely to change up or down until that final design is in place.

So just want everybody to be aware of that.

The agreement provides for up to $2 million to be made available in conjunction

with land disturbing activities related to the PUD.

So it's designed to happen in accordance with the PUD development to allow the improvements to take place along with that work to minimize the impact to the whole area and to do it in an efficient manner.

Any amounts over the $2 million would obviously need to be sourced separately by the city and are not covered by this agreement.

The city is obligated to repay when and only when the increment is actually realized.

If for some reason the increment did not accrue, our obligation would be fulfilled at the end of this agreement.

So obviously there's an incentive for the developer to actually

to have the increment accrue to get their full recuperation of the funds that they've advanced, essentially.

Our estimates are varying, but depending upon how the build-out happens, if the build-out happens roughly over a four-year period in equal amounts, 170 units, a full repayment of the $2 million could occur in five to six years.

That's just an estimate, but it's just a point of reference for those wondering how long it might take the city to return these funds to the developer.

So once again, this agreement is in draft form.

We did provide it yesterday to interested parties in the Planning Commission.

The key elements have been agreed upon by the parties, but until it's approved by city council, it's obviously not final and would obviously have to be executed by both parties to be official.

So should the rezoning proceed, this infrastructure funding agreement would also need to be approved by the city.

And then the city would need to, as referenced earlier, design the project, perform right away acquisition.

and actually engage a contractor to make the improvements happen.

But all that would happen pending your activities tonight and Council's future hearings on this project.

So that's the overview I wanted to provide.

Hopefully it's helpful in understanding based on the concerns that the folks living in that neighborhood have had over the years about sidewalks and drainage and

and vehicular movements in there.

So in summary, this essentially allows a project that's been needed for some time to happen at a slightly quicker pace than what might be anticipated with a normal CIP in a manner that doesn't impact that CIP directly by using borrowed funds essentially upfront and then returning those as the planned unit development yields additional tax increment to the city.

Thank you.

I think it would be helpful to have commissioner questions at this time.

Any issues with that for staff?

And I understand Mr. Duncan is also available for questions.

Can we start with Mr. Mitchell?

A couple of questions, and maybe this is for Ms.

Robertson.

The 30 years of purchased affordability, the units that are available to be purchased for 30 years that are affordable.

And this is a question I'll ask of the applicant as well.

One, I'll ask the applicant when he is up to walk us through the logistics of that.

But I'll ask Mr. Robertson to walk us through how do we enforce that?

And what happens if a person buys the house

As soon as it's built, it's affordable, and five years later, they sell it.

Yes.

Yeah, I mean, that would be good.

We'll wait till the African gets up.

Okay.

So this is a, this is an issue that we're seeing over and over and over again.

Because particularly in relation to for sale units, there is no internal consistency of policy with the city as to

whether or not the city is looking for you know committed units at a particular location so a particular unit would remain affordable for 30 years or whether the city would like people who purchase that unit for the very first time to be able to realize some benefit from it but later sell it for fair market value and so

until we make some policy decisions in connection with hopefully the new zoning ordinance, we're sort of left with a bunch of different provisions.

So number one, if the city's current zoning ordinance in section 3412 requires a developer to provide a certain number of units,

Those required units are subject to the provisions of the city's existing regulations and housing policies.

And the existing regulations do specify that deed restrictions be recorded.

Now, people don't like those.

that people who favor allowing people who purchase the home to be able to sell it at a certain point in the future don't favor restrictive covenants, at least not ones that don't allow for the property to be sold at something that resembles fair market value.

But to whatever extent

We have regulations.

Those regulations requiring the covenant apply to the standard operating procedures.

And Rory just posted a link to those procedures in the chat.

They're lengthy and they deal with a number of things.

But the short answer is those regulations do require individuals to record a deed restricting the use of the property

but that's only in relation to the required number of units.

So in a lot of developments that you see coming through, that might only be one or two units.

If the developer, in addition to any required units, is voluntarily just offering additional number of units, then whatever promises you are receiving are only as good as what

your application materials describe.

So if your application materials say, we'll give you a recorded covenant, then that sort of equates with the regulations.

If the application materials say something else, then you get whatever the applicant is proffering or offering you.

What I'll note in connection with this particular application is that if you look at the provisions of the proffer statement in paragraph 1C, the applicant is saying that the obligations set out in the proffers will be set forth within one or more written declarations of covenants so that everyone who buys property from the developer

Well, you know, we know that we have the proffers going forward and those are zoning ordinance provisions.

But with that recorded written declaration, that means that everybody who purchases that land from the developer will be on notice as a result of some declaration of covenants in their chain of title, that they may be purchasing a piece of property that has to remain

usable as an affordable unit going forward, consistent with what the proffers say.

So it's important that you all, in making your recommendations, are comfortable with what paragraphs 1A and 1B of those proffers say.

Because they may, to the extent that there are units which aren't subject to section 3412, the applicant

is setting forth in those paragraphs what they're willing to do.

But the other thing that I will note is that the provisions of paragraph 1B do make reference to your existing regulations.

And so to that extent, the applicant is promising to administer all of the rental units in accordance with

the provisions of your existing regulations.

And I'll yield back because I don't want to take up other commissioners' time.

I do have other questions.

I'll just make a philosophical statement.

It seems to me that it defeats the purpose.

A low income owner can't build their wealth by eventually, maybe after five years or so, being able to market that property at fair market rates.

Well, before you yield, though, I just want to note that that's a big policy decision that the city has to make relative to for sale units.

Because if you're saying at the time of a rezoning, that something's going to remain affordable for 30 years,

That scenario you just described means that the property is affordable during that five years, but it will go away at the end of five years.

So that's a perfectly legitimate policy choice if the city chooses to make it, but it's not real clear in any of our, you know, regulations or requirements at this point, which preferences you may have depending on

Long-term affordability in rental units is a good thing.

Long-term, respecting of a low-income person's ability to build their wealth is problematic.

Thank you.

Ms.

I thought I was talking.

I apologize.

So I did have a question, but I think it's more so for the applicant.

So I'll wait.

One thing that I was concerned about is that staff recommended as far as the housing types, they've recommended the plan, but then also said that they didn't recommend it based on the street safety and some of the other improvements and affordability.

So I just kind of wanted some clarification on why the mix recommendation.

Commissioner, are you looking for some clarification from staff?

Yes, please.

So basically, what you're seeing in that mixed recommendation is just based on our current comprehensive plan, you're not going to hit every point.

And so there's points where this development hits, it does meet the goals of the comprehensive plan.

And there are points where it falls short.

So that's why you're seeing

Safety is always, you know, going to be paramount life safety issues.

And I think that's, you know, the main thing and then it

It is hard to judge the way our current comp plan is.

It doesn't weigh different goals.

So it's a little hard to say.

Thank you.

Thank you.

First question, I guess I wanted to follow up on the affordable dwelling unit point.

My question was, if it's kind of slated for the 60% AMI, that talks specifically about the home ownership one, for example, and then that person gets a raise and they make 65%, does that mean they have to move out?

How does that work?

if it's part of the deed restriction that it's slated for that 60% AMI.

I guess my question is to Ms.

So within a rental unit, generally, there's some leeway for a person to stay for some amount of time.

And in some of the covenants or the

regulations, you know, you want to allow some opportunity for a property owner to move around.

So on a rental unit, if they designate certain units in the development as the affordable units, if they want to allow a person to stay in a particular unit, even when their income exceeds what's allowed,

You want to allow some leeway to amend that designation so that the required number of units can be maintained, but you might want to designate a different unit instead of making somebody move.

So the rental are, I won't say that rental units are easy to administer, but the process is easier to set up and manage because the rental affordable units are the ones that everyone's

We're used to dealing with because of the voucher systems and stuff.

The for sale units are very difficult.

It certainly is not going to be a workable arrangement to say that once somebody owns a house, they have to move out even though they're the owner if their income increases.

I think generally your income would be established at the time of the sale to you as

as an affordable owner.

So with the for sale units, your change in income over time doesn't really matter as much.

Thank you so much.

That makes sense.

My other question was for city staff, if they had, if the traffic engineer had a chance to go over the proposed agreement on Stribling Avenue, and if they had any comments or anything on that.

Since I think a big issue from the staff report was that safety of that street as it is right now for the development.

This is Jack Dawson.

I'm the city engineer, not the city traffic engineer.

But we saw the agreement the other day.

I did not see the design.

My concern is probably that that estimate is a little light.

to tie it back to some questions.

I think they were in the pre-meeting.

It isn't just a sidewalk.

It's essentially a streetscape because when you touch a road, you have to bring it to code.

That road is not 20 feet throughout.

So if you have an 18 foot wide road and you need to bring it to 20 feet, then you're excavating, doing CBR tests, compacting stone underneath just to widen the road before you build the curbs.

When you curb the road, now you're concentrating water.

And so even though there's not a significant impervious increase,

All of the water that diffused through sheet flow onto various people's properties will be concentrated in various places and there is not an infrastructure to support that, whether it's existing storm drain infrastructure, open green infrastructure of any kind.

And so we have a couple different estimates because this has been lingering around primarily through the community CIP development process or neighborhood development process.

It's not a priority for the city regarding sidewalks and stated before we only have $650,000 in our

account now for sidewalks for CIP with only $100,000 maybe projected for the next couple years.

All of that money is tied up in a multimodal revenue share, which is a grant matching with VDOT that won't hit the books for another three years.

So we literally cannot do any other sidewalks.

And so again, we do have a few very general estimates on there.

The last one that we conducted was $2.9 million, and that was just a sunset.

So

There's significant design endeavor and construction endeavor in order to facilitate this, so I would be remiss if I didn't say that that was the primary concern is the cost.

We have not reviewed plans, so there is no, I can't, you know, if the sidewalk gets built, it would be to code with minimal variances based on existing conditions.

I don't think Brennan is on the call tonight because he asked me if he should be.

We didn't see that plan, so he doesn't have too much to speak to, so.

Mr. Bob, that covered you?

Outstanding.

Thank you, Chair.

I noticed that there are some very large, mature hardwood trees on the applicant's land along Stribling Avenue, and they are removed in the proposed plan.

Is there something that the city staff and city engineers know about or are requiring that is causing those trees to be removed?

Commissioner, I'm not aware.

We're not at site plan.

So again, this is more at the land use level.

So this would have been any decision, I believe would have been the applicants unless they were following a guideline in the zoning code as they're preparing the plan.

Okay.

Yeah, from engineering, I'm sure there's a requirement that they build sidewalk along the frontage of Stribling there as well as dedicate some right of way to increase that right of way to basic standards.

So if those trees you're talking about are eight feet beyond the existing property line, they almost certainly would be be removed based on building the sidewalk there for Stribbling.

But short of that, this, our comments, our review process are what you'd read in the report, essentially.

Okay, thank you.

Ms.

Thanks.

I had a question about Morgan Court.

We talked in the pre-meeting a little bit about the question was what's the threshold requiring two points of ingress and egress, and it was generally communicated that 50

50 units triggers that requirement.

And then Matt, you noted that that was unless two access points would create an unsafe condition.

This is the two.

So I want to generally understand, I guess, is it at 50 units that a development requires two points of ingress, egress?

Because we have this proposed access along Morgan Court through Huntley, right?

Oh, there's Brennan.

Yeah, sorry, my connection was going in and out.

So yes, a few years ago, we actually redid this code section.

It used to say 15 dwelling units, and we changed the code section to be kind of at the discretion of the traffic engineer and fire marshal.

The project that kind of prompted that was a very narrow lot.

I think it was only maybe 50 or 60 feet wide, but had very tall and was dense.

Per the code, they were required to do two points of egress, whereas

It was actually more dangerous having two access points that close together.

And so that was kind of why we changed the code.

Thanks.

I have two other questions, and maybe they're going to be best

as opposed to the applicant, but I'm curious if you have any thoughts of there being another option for achieving two points of access.

I have some concerns about Morgan Street capacity, and I note that it has additional lots not built out.

There's potential for more, I think, 13 lots along that cul-de-sac, and it just generally doesn't seem like a very safe road and not a public road either.

Well, it was constructed with the intent to be a public street.

It was not constructed necessarily to be a connector road.

But I know I had sent something.

We had some questions from the public early on on this.

Because even if you add in the units that have not been developed on Morgan Court at this point in time,

240 struggling out of the equation.

The average traffic on that roadway fully developed is only like 150 or 200 vehicles per day.

And with this development, it would still push up only to like somewhere between 400 and 600.

I forget the exact number, which is still well below or well within a acceptable capacity for a neighborhood street.

It's not until you get up close to a thousand vehicles per day that, you know, normal kind of livability standards start to be, you know, noise, traffic, that kind of stuff is, you know, it's around that thousand threshold.

So this, even with this development, it would still fall below that.

There may be opportunity to do two access points coming out to Stribling.

That may be an option for the developer to consider, but I still think that in this particular instance, connecting to Morgan Court,

is appropriate for the volume standpoint and just connectability.

Otherwise, you do force all the vehicles out onto Stribling as opposed to letting origin destination dictate where they're trying to get to.

Okay, so just to clarify, you're making that assessment on capacity and is that also taking into account the existing conditions, meaning like lack of sidewalks, the fact that there's mailboxes that don't have a sidewalk to stand to get the mail and that's an okay situation?

Yeah, I'm not sure what happened to Brennan's connection there, but to jump in there, you know, Brennan looks at it from the traffic connection standpoint.

And so while it would be much better to have sidewalks there and have all the mailbox access by sidewalks, et cetera, et cetera,

The road still serves to function as being a public city road with vehicular and pedestrian connectivity.

So while it's not an ideal situation, it was in theory designed to be a local street and carry those traffic loads.

How it was designed and built and the result maybe leaves something to be desired for sure.

But the point is that it is,

Yeah, thanks.

No, they're up there this morning.

Morgan.

OK.

All right, well, I guess I have a couple questions.

I guess we lost Mr. Duncan, but maybe quickly for Mr. Dawson.

So was this second connection driven?

Oh, he's back.

So Mr. Duncan then, was the second connection driven by staff asking the applicant for it?

Yes.

It was driven.

Gotcha.

And then, you know, I see looking at the 2013, the Adopted Comprehensive Plan, how it talks about encouraging new street connections and increasing network connectivity.

Is that kind of the general theme?

Yeah, so I'll speak to that a little, Brennan, just because there's, when you look at a buy-write development, so the traffic engineer, city engineer, you know, they're looking at it through their lens of their discipline of that capacity, as Brennan spoke about.

When you're looking at a conditional zoning or SUP, we're looking at other factors too, like the comprehensive plan.

Gotcha.

And then is it unheard of in the city for a cul-de-sac to turn into a connected street?

I can think of several roads, Fairway, St.

Charles,

I think Riverside that have what looked like they were cul-de-sacs at one point and then were extended.

I don't know when those happened, but is that like something unusual in the traffic engineering world?

Normal?

Okay.

All right.

Thanks.

That answers my traffic questions.

Next, I guess I'll jump on what Commissioner Mitchell said about the

before sale, like retail, I guess.

Of course, I've lost my standard operating procedures.

But as I recall, the very essentially last line of the standard operating procedure, Schedule 2, which governs the for sale units, which I think is on page 14 of that document, it says the CAU commitment will describe how resale of CAUs will be handled so that the term affordability can be satisfied.

and separately it says like minimum 10 years.

So I guess, are we saying that like the applicant is saying 30 years and that's what kind of creates this problem where the like probably within 30 years most homes will be resold.

And then I guess it seems like that proper doesn't explicitly say that they have to be resold at an affordable rate but if they aren't then the developer has to

provide an additional for sale unit at an affordable rate somewhere else in the city.

And so then it's a safe assumption that the developer is somehow going to make the owner sell it affordably.

So I think I don't know that it's that specific.

So the way that I read those regulations, what it says is the first sale

always has to be affordable in accordance with the provisions of those regulations, which says 80% or less and certain things.

The way I read that additional provision, what it requires is that a developer will establish at the time the development is approved

a document that that actually describes what's going to happen for all subsequent sales of that property.

So I think that provision was specifically there to leave some flexibility.

So you

The developer might say, hey, I want to partner with this nonprofit, and this is the model that they use.

Or it leaves some room to say, we want people to be able to sell and make some money, but we still would like it to be a resale at a certain level.

So it leaves some room for people to make proposals for the city's consideration.

Remember, these regulations go with Section 34-12.

And by the time that somebody is asking for a building permit, we want them to tell us what the plan is.

So either you're going to keep them affordable for no less than 10 years.

But if someone's offering 30 years, that might be the commitment.

You're going to keep that specific unit affordable throughout that designated affordability period.

Or at the very least, you're going to tell us

what's gonna happen after the first sale.

Gotcha, okay, I think I get it.

All right, my last question or set of questions is for Mr. Engel about the performance agreement

So I guess help me understand why this performance agreement is better than the initial offer from the applicant to just give us half a million dollars worth of cash.

If I'm understanding this correctly, the city collects the tax increment regardless of whether there's an agreement or not, right?

Because if there's any construction, the tax assessment will go up and we will collect more tax revenue.

And so then it's just a matter of allocating money to make the sidewalk improvements actually happen.

So we could, in the counterfactual,

Allocate that money in the CIP, take out bonds that will be 20 years and roughly the same interest rate, maybe a little bit higher, and then pay off those bonds with the tax revenue we get.

But instead, we're essentially taking a loan from the applicant and directly allocating the tax increment money.

But in the counterfactual, we would have had half a million dollars cash too.

So what are the benefits there?

And the one I see is that even if they end up not constructing the project, we still get that money from them and basically never pay it back.

So let me just jump in real quickly before Chris starts.

So the first scenario you described just talks about the city's capital improvements process.

That's

exactly the definition of a CIP program.

You prioritize and identify what projects you want to do.

You project what revenues you're going to receive from tax revenues that year, and you apply those revenues to your priority list.

And so in that first scenario, it's not really a TIF.

It's just how you normally are supposed to do a CIP.

And so I'll let Chris take over from there, because I don't want to confuse people too much.

Right.

Yeah, I think that's a good point.

I guess I was saying we would mentally earmark the extra money to pay for that in the CIP, which would move up in priority because this is all happening and we have this extra revenue.

But I guess nothing explicitly ties it together.

Well, that's certainly part of it.

The other part is the pressure on the CIP with regard to its capacity.

And this circumvents that in a manner of speaking, because the developer provides those funds up front, and the city doesn't have to carve it out in next year's CIP.

But we get some time to pay that back.

And we get additional revenue from the development to help pay that back.

So that I think is the

is the benefit there.

OK, so you said we don't have to allocate in the CIP.

But I thought earlier, or by email, I heard that we still have to allocate it in the CIP just with this extra source of revenue.

So are we saying that it doesn't count against our bonding capacity for our debt rating?

There's a couple of components to it.

Part of the design work would still have to be done by the city.

So there would still have to be a CIP project and the design component would have to be accommodated there.

The funds that the developer is proposing are for the construction of the improvements.

So that's where that would come from.

So we'd have to time all that out with respect to how the developer intends to develop

And there's a drop-dead date that the funding must be provided by in the agreement, if not sooner, if land disturbance hasn't happened sooner.

So we would have to kind of time all those out so that it works appropriately.

And that would impact at least one of our CIP budgets on some level.

Okay.

So that's just for design though.

And then

potentially, eventually cost overruns, as Mr. Dawson said.

Yeah, in theory, that's correct.

Okay.

All right.

Let's keep it moving.

No, I don't have any questions.

Outstanding.

Can we please hear from the applicant?

I'm sorry, please continue.

I think we're supposed to be talking about the critical slope in the

and the actual application all at once, right?

Because we have two votes, but we're going to review them all.

And we didn't talk much about the critical slopes.

I wonder if I can ask just a couple of quick questions about that.

Mr., looks like Mr. Dawson is very cautious about the application as he typically is, and that's a good thing, but it looks like the folks from,

from the other side of the House, and that is not as concerning.

The Environmental Sustainability Division are pretty happy that the applicant is going to be able to keep 73% of the phosphorus out of the water, based on the things that they're going to do.

The question I've got for Mr. Alpe is, on page

He walks us through eight different recommendations that I think would make him comfortable.

So those recommendations really came out of engineering.

So I will defer to the

Yes, so I'd be happy to speak to that.

If you recall, we've obviously typically when I'm here from the planning conditions to talk about critical slopes.

And you may recall last time I was in front of y'all, it was associated with South First Street, man, the whole conversation about the difficulties of

Overlaying, engineering, review, and with planning process prior to design.

That was a little bit different because it was mid-project and so we had all the details we needed to go with.

This takes us very much back to a very general

ideas of how to safely handle the water here.

These have evolved from my experience doing this over a couple of years to essentially what's boilerplate at this point.

I believe there was a concept level plan for road set patrol in the package, which I did look at when I put this together, but these are primarily essentially boilerplate advisements to how best manage a project like this to avoid

It's not a guarantee.

And if you read it, the wording about recommendations is was very carefully crafted with the help of Mr. Alfili here so that it was not it's

If you feel that it meets finding number one, then this is the bare minimum that should be put on.

So I can't say, I don't know how the project will be designed or built even at this phase.

And typically it is very difficult for you at this point to say this is going to be a good thing this early in the day.

So we have to, we're pretty much having to go in good faith that if they do these things, they've done the best they can, at least until you get to the site plan review.

Correct.

Okay.

Okay.

Right.

Of course.

Mr. Armstrong, thank you for your patience.

Just a little bit of complications going on here.

That's fine with me.

And you all have actually covered a lot of my presentation in great detail already.

So I will try to move as quickly through it as I can.

I'm Charlie Armstrong.

I'm with Southern Development.

Also on our team here in the Zoom are Kevin Riddle of Mitchell Matthews Architects and Clint Shifflett of the Timmins Group.

You've seen this project before in three Planning Commission work sessions.

And it's been a very deliberate two-year listening process to get to this point where we're asking for your formal recommendation.

The community's feedback and your feedback help us craft what we think is an excellent project now.

And if we can get the presentation up on the screen.

Thank you.

And just go right on to the next slide.

So I want to spend a few minutes talking about that process.

I'll be brief.

When we first looked at the property, we first considered what can be done by right without coming to the Planning Commissioner Council.

It's smart for us to know what our baseline is and the by right is a viable plan financially, but it is not what we want to do, nor is it what we think the city needs most.

My ride on this parcel will be about 46 lots, mostly large lots, single-family detached homes, some of which are nearly an acre in size.

It would potentially trip up to that needing a connection to Morgan Court, but that was not something we analyzed in enough detail to look at.

Next, we considered an R2 rezoning.

This concept would be roughly 68 duplex lots.

You all looked at this.

We think it's better than my right just because of the density, but it's still a very suburban feeling concept.

No real design appeal.

I came to you the first time we brought this feeling a little sheepish about bringing it to you.

You didn't like it.

We didn't really like it either and neither did the neighbors.

This was all in August of 2019, about two years ago.

and through that the Planning Commission told us very clearly you wanted to see something more dense and less suburban.

So we engaged Mitchell Matthews Architects and they developed this early concept for a PUD.

We brought this to the community and then to you in January and February of 2020.

The Planning Commission at that time unanimously indicated they like the PUD approach and like this concept

but said that the condition of Strickland Avenue was a hang-up.

We showed you this high-level comparison of Bi-Rite versus PUD at the time, highlighting some pros and cons of each.

I think most of them are self-explanatory.

We don't need to revisit them too much.

We're not evaluating Bi-Rite tonight.

We came back to the Planning Commission and the community a third time in September last year, this time on a Zoom.

With most of the project specifics you still see tonight,

At that work session, the Planning Commission again voiced support for the PUD, but again told us that the $500,000 we were offering at the time for Stirling Avenue improvements might not be enough.

I clipped this screenshot from the minutes of that Planning Commission meeting because Mr. Leandro summed it up very well, talking about how much he likes this PUD proposal because of its layout, design, and thoughtfulness, but he could not approve it without ensuring that Stirling gets sidewalks.

at that meeting.

So I want to go through the major themes we saw in the community feedback.

That feedback's in your packet, and you will no doubt hear additional viewpoints tonight.

But three main themes stood out very prominently from the hundreds of community members we engaged during the six feedback sessions.

Those themes are that most people are in favor of density and affordability.

People are concerned about a road connection to Morgan Court.

and improvements to striveling are needed and long overdue.

I pulled out four example letters from community members.

This first one is Farable of Density and notes the importance of improvements to striveling and comments on housing history and housing need.

I hope I'm giving you enough time to skim this briefly, but these are in your packet, so I'm just highlighting them.

This next slide notes the need for housing and affordability.

mentions concerns about Morgan Court and notes the need for improvements on Stirling Avenue.

And the next one, same themes here.

And we can just scroll on through.

And this final example is the formal letter about the project from the Fry Spring Neighborhood Association.

The Fry Spring Neighborhood Association board voted to support this PUD proposal

but their caveat was if and only if we in the city figure out how to make the improvements to Sterling Avenue happen prior to completion of the PUD.

So that is what we've spent the last year figuring out and more on that in a few minutes.

We've already talked about it some.

Now I'll introduce Kevin Riddle of Mitchell Matthews Architects.

He's gonna spend a couple of minutes on the design goals and methods.

Yeah, sure.

Hi, I'm Kevin Riddle with Mitchell Matthews.

I'll just talk briefly about our general design strategy.

Charlie approached our office a couple of years ago to reconsider the design of this neighborhood.

And we began by evaluating the potential for more homes here.

And as we did, we realized this goal could be coupled with the creation of a network of open spaces.

We could increase the amount and variety of community greens or common ground than you would find in a conventional development.

And then better still,

We could go further and also de-emphasize the presence of motor vehicles and of exposed surface paving here.

We realized that more housing, if thoughtfully arrayed, did not have to compromise the greater neighborhood environment.

In fact, it might be essential to enhancing it.

To accomplish this, we decided that a compact arrangement, more urban than suburban, had real potential and made sense.

When you look at the following illustrations, we hope you'll see a few of the merits of this approach.

Here in this bird's eye view, the proposed neighborhood is shown within the red property boundary, if you can make that out.

In this view, you can see that a significant belt of bottomland at the south and southeast of the parcel is left largely undisturbed.

On the west side, behind the three multifamily buildings, this belt continues around and to the north.

So by focusing street and building construction at the middle of the site and at the stribbling end, a large swath of woodlands, one that includes many of the site's oldest and biggest trees remains.

Compare the proposed development to the Eagles Landing apartments to the south.

Those are visible in the bottom left of the image.

At Eagles Landing, large sloths of surface paving and parked cars separate buildings and tenants.

In the proposed neighborhood at 240 Stripling, the majority of cars will be parked under the buildings, out of sight when not in use.

And so that leaves more room outside that can be set aside for yards, porches, paths, greens.

At the top of this image, you can see the close proximity of the proposal to Fontaine Research Park, where a lot of people go to work every day.

And it's only a modest walk or bike ride away from the proposed neighborhood.

If we advance to the next slide,

You start to see the interior environments this PUD could encourage.

This view is taken from what's called Road B on the civil plans.

It's adjacent to a large rectangular green.

It's looking down the site through a cascading band of narrower green spaces that separate townhomes.

Here you can see that our strategy, while compact and concentrated, is not overly rigid or continuous.

It's not arbitrary.

We have intentionally designed openings in the built fabric to frame views and make visual connections.

In this case, looking from the middle of the site all the way down to the bottom land.

And more than this, the interconnected greens also provide potentially a recreational corridor.

The very dimensions of these open spaces

invites a variety of activities at a range of scales.

The larger green might be just right to throw a football or set up bad mitten nets.

Another smaller space is better for a small family gathering to barbecue and catch up around a picnic table.

The green spaces insinuate themselves in what would otherwise be a repetitious rank and file of townhomes.

They contribute to a rich environment of outdoor space and common ground.

In the next slide,

You're looking between townhomes toward one of the multifamily buildings, and you're standing in what we call a muse arrangement.

Another way to describe this, it's kind of like a garden apartment, although in this case, townhouses comprise most of the dwellings around the garden.

Here, the scale is a little different than in the last illustration.

It's tighter knit, more intimate within the muse space, filled with more paths, plants, and porches.

Here you see the potential for a nice pedestrian environment as an alternative to a street running down the middle.

We show this image and the previous slide in support of an argument that city staff's concerns about the smaller private roads are perhaps a little misplaced.

Without these roads or lanes that access the backs of the townhomes, the project would require many, many individual driveways and curb cuts at the larger public streets.

in many cases connected to garages that face on the larger streets.

As an alternative here, our proposal has very few driveways where the public walks, bikes, and drives.

Very few cars parked in front yards.

And in the place of cars and driveways, we have greater opportunities to create generous yard, garden, and pathways unobstructed by traffic.

Without the private roads, in other words, what you see in this illustration would not be possible.

So it's our position that the private roads cause negligible downside and instead allow multiple advantages that would make this community distinctive, cohesive, and comfortable.

Thanks, Kevin.

So Kevin gave me a nice segue into some of Stass concerns, which you all touched on earlier.

One of those was the private roads.

I think he explained that exceptionally well.

That's very intentional to relegate those to a secondary status.

They do meet city requirements, but they are not a focus.

Two of the other concerns are things that we resolve with final engineering.

We just aren't at the level of detail yet to be precisely placing water meter and sewer lateral connections.

So how those relate to street trees will be worked out at final site plan.

There are requirements in the code for that.

And that comes back to you at a later date for review to make sure we did what we're supposed to do.

We're also considering adding a 10-foot maximum setback for townhomes from those roads, which would give some additional code flexibility to eliminate those conflicts.

If you all have any concerns with that, feel free to let us know.

The fourth staff concern is about Morgan Court.

The fifth is about Sterling Avenue.

Morgan Court

is a secondary entrance.

You all talked about it already.

By design, it won't be the most convenient or fastest way in or out of this PUD.

We think a secondary connection is good planning practice, but if the city wants to restrict that entrance to emergency access or one-way traffic or something like that, we're willing.

One-way traffic in whichever direction will create the least use is absolutely fine with us.

It might be a good compromised solution that discourages daily use but allows it to be a good

connection.

Since it will be a city street, the city can make that decision.

We are very happy to lead that in the hands of the city engineers to decide.

Affordable housing, we've got a robust affordable housing profit here, 15% below 60% AMI.

Lisa answered the question earlier about what happens if the unit is allowed to sell at market rate very well.

We or an affordable housing partner we bring in would have to include a mechanism in their deed and the covenant

so that in the event a homeowner sells at market rate on one of the ADUs, there's some equity recapture provision in the covenants sufficient to create a new ADU elsewhere within the city.

Paragraph 1C of the proffer toward the bottom of that paragraph deals with that.

We want that low income owner to be able to participate in the opportunity for wealth building that comes with home ownership.

Buying a home doesn't mean much if you don't get to participate in that.

So for rental, as income increases, it was mentioned earlier, it's true, they may not qualify any longer for a subsidized unit for people who are below 60% AMI, but there is a grace period of a substantial amount of time to allow them to find a new rental if they do get a raise or a new job or otherwise have an event that changes their income qualification for the rental unit.

Again, if a low income person buys one of the homes, they own it.

They live there as long or as many generations as they want to.

Next slide.

So it's true.

Figuring out a way to fund these improvements was a major challenge for us.

And it's the primary reason for the year gap between today and when we last presented this to you.

There's no question about the need for this.

Funding has always been a barrier.

City staff has requested funding from council in each of the last few CIP cycles.

But council has never been able to allocate it.

Those numbers for the CIP cost estimates taken directly from those CIP requests is there on your screen now.

If council had been able to allocate that money, the sidewalks on Strymon would already be in the works, but they prioritized other things.

So the dollar amount that the agreement covers is the highest of any of the city's own CIP estimates.

and it's 30% more than a third party engineer's estimate.

So both the city CFB estimates and the third party engineers indicated $2 million covers all of the costs of sidewalks and the needed drainage improvements.

I can't speak to cost overruns.

I hope that doesn't happen, but we're working with estimates that have been produced by city and other engineers as well.

So council will vote on this at the same time as they vote on the PUD.

To me, they run hand in glove.

They can't be separated.

One does not work without the other, even if it's not part of the official zoning.

And then the struggling improvements can occur contemporaneous with the PUD construction.

We have in our agreement some language

where we will help facilitate the contractor and make sure that happens.

This is as important to us as it is to everybody else.

So we've tried to craft it to make sure that the language in that agreement does all that.

It does require some action by the city, but if the money's there, I got to think the action will follow more easily.

So in short, we're providing enough funding upfront out of our pocket to fund this important CIP project.

And then we are creating the real estate tax revenue stream that repays it.

Doing that sooner gets the sidewalk done sooner.

Waiting for CIP and then doing this project, it's the same thing, just we have to wait longer for sidewalks.

Having these funds out there for an undetermined amount of time does have some significant costs to our project budget because we have to carry that on our books and we borrow money for a living.

I don't know if you know what developers really do, but we really borrow money for a living.

So the money for this would be money that we source and we pay interest on.

And I guarantee you our interest rates are not nearly as attractive as the city's bond rates.

But we're really excited that we can make it happen.

It's been something that we've been

Most of the questions I have have been raised for staff.

Um, and I, I still have lingering questions around this agreement, but I, I don't know that this is the right time to get into that.

The only question that I had when I don't, I remember whether you touched on this before, but, um, when the, the, the, the sidewalks get built at the developer's expense,

and it is to be in essence reimbursed by tax breaks of various sorts over the next five years.

When the ownership at that point is among potentially many, many, many people, how are you gonna distribute that?

Yeah, Councillor Snoke, I can speak to that.

That's essentially, it's one parcel now.

So it's really easy to determine that.

And we've determined the base value based upon the value of the current parcel.

Once it's platted and subdivided into multiple parcels, we will work with the city assessor to essentially use our GIS system to determine the collective value of the improvements.

And then that will give us the difference between the base value and the improved value.

It doesn't really affect my opinion of the project as a whole, but it struck me as something I was curious about.

That's all.

And most of my questions were asked, it sounds like these may not be

entirely knowable at this point, but the two questions that came to mind that I had are one, trying to assess the likelihood that there will be cost overruns in terms of the cost of these improvements realistically, you know, will it be 2 million or will it be higher than that?

And then two, echoing the question Commissioner O'Hendro had about the tree canopy on the site, I've walked that site and

I can certainly speak to the first question.

There have not been any estimates made on that improvement.

The CIP requests are just that CIP request.

I'm sure everybody here is very familiar how our CIP process works, maybe, and maybe not an exemplary example of

functional level government.

And so what we had was 2 million was to get it started.

You have to design this thing to estimate to have this design is somewhere in the quarter of a million dollars because this is not an insignificant effort.

And so I would say there's almost, if it exceeded $2 million, it would not be overrun because there is no estimate put together at this point in time.

And I would not categorize drawing a sidewalk over an accurate survey and estimate either.

So it is very important that you understand that there is not a solid estimate of this.

The most solid estimate that my staff did came out at $2.9 million and that got to sunset.

There are significant property takes involved.

I did on a call see a snippet of the proposed plan which showed 20 feet curb to curb.

You can't park on 20 feet street, which would eliminate all of the ad hoc, you know, Charlottesville style parking that people do there now.

You can't drive over a curb to park in your yard.

While the committee, I'm sure, wants a sidewalk, they probably don't want that design.

And it gets more expensive when you get away from just throwing lines on the plan to how's this going to work?

Where's the stormwater going to go?

So there is no estimate as far as I'm concerned.

And my general estimate will be higher than $2 million.

I can just say, again, trees are kind of a shared responsibility among the reviewers and city staff.

But if it's in the LOD, it's not going to be safe.

That's how it works.

So if you see any of those plants and there's a tree in there, I mean, you can see they're obviously cramming a lot of stuff in that little area.

Commissioners.

Mr. Dawson, what in the what, LLV?

I'm sorry, that was engineering.

LOD, the limits of disturbance.

So the limits of disturbance, which is at the start of almost all construction projects, they state that you can't go outside of it.

That's generally where the perimeter controls are.

But if you look at the plan, there's a little line around that development area.

Inside the development, all I'm looking at is the property line and the trees, a tree survey at this point.

Page 291 of the packet, I think.

291, Roy.

I expect it will come up, yes.

The numbers that I had in my presentation are from the CIP that was produced and presented to council in the last two CIP cycles.

And so those are the numbers we used.

This 2.9 number that Mr. Goss referenced is new to me as of right now.

That's not a number that I've ever seen published or ever heard and we've been talking with the city and then in this review process with the city for months and years so I would have hoped that might have come up but if that's a published number or there's something behind it I'd love to review it.

we did to make sure we were in the right ballpark or that the CIP estimates that the city did itself were in the right ballpark just to give us an extra degree of certainty was to hire an engineer, a third-party engineer to do their own cost estimate that involved a lot of survey work to survey the entire corridor so anybody who lives there has seen the ribbons

over the past six months or so, and then use that survey to come up with a preliminary plan.

Yes, it's very preliminary.

It's not a design for construction at this point, but it gives an idea of what will be required, what grading, what new sidewalk area, what new storm drainage, and also what right away amounts over the length of the corridor might be needed.

And then the engineer put a cost estimate to that using whatever their industry standard estimating is.

And Clint Shifflett with Timmons Group is on the call and probably can speak a little bit more detail as to that process, which led them to the number that they came up with.

Yeah, sure, Charlie.

I'm happy to chime in.

I'm Clint Shippa with Timmons Group, a civil engineer that assisted on this preliminary engineering endeavor for the corridor improvements.

What we looked at kind of as a basis of design is a minimum street width, a street section that would meet the streets network guidelines, as well as the standards and design manual.

In this case, as I think Jack noted, we use a 20 foot wide pavement section, standard curb and gutter, and sidewalks on both sides of the streets.

To further inform some of the costs, we incorporated estimated stormwater management costs, drainage improvements, demolition,

Pretty much a pretty good deep dive.

Yeah.

The presentation you guys did was pretty quiet as relates to the critical slopes.

I'd like to talk a little bit about your thoughts as it relates to your medication strategy as it relates to that.

I suspect you guys are angling towards nutrient credits.

Okay, that's the first question.

The second question is maybe you guys can walk me through what it is you're going to do to keep 73%

of the the prosperous stuff out of our creeks.

It looks like that's an overview you presented, but I'm not certain what your game plan is to do that.

Yeah, I'm happy to chime in again on that.

I think generally speaking, and I think Kevin touched on it earlier in the presentation,

The general concept is to keep the bulk of the development away from the slopes kind of up, squished up towards Stribling Avenue as to minimize the impact and preserve as many of the slopes along Morris Creek as possible.

So that's step one to help minimize the impact.

To further mitigate the impact, we've included some preliminary design elements that include bioretention or rain garden facilities.

that would capture and treat water before it leaves the site back towards Morris Creek.

So that is the primary way in which that 73% that you mentioned would be removed, would be through those bioretention facilities.

To elaborate that a little bit more to give you some kind of concrete numbers that may be easy to relate to, preserving that riparian buffer was a big deal to us.

And so about the closest that any of this disturbance comes to the Moores Creek bank is about 150 feet.

The one exception is where storm sewer has to get down the hill.

You can't just dump a whole bunch of stormwater

whose applications we have to review, not to treat the critical slopes as an afterthought.

Please keep those in the front of your mind.

I have a couple of questions.

My first one was on the rental affordable units.

Are those expected to be kind of sprinkled throughout the development or are they all in the apartment buildings?

Yeah, it's most likely that the rental units would be in the apartment buildings.

We have not decided that for sure.

And you have 30% rental, 30% ownership, and the rest are like you still have to decide what you want to do with them, one or the other, maybe.

That's right.

It's kind of a political pendulum sometimes for which is more demanded.

Thank you.

Ms.

I'm just asking in general, I guess for me it was kind of, and I've already stated this to staff, to have a split recommendation.

So while I do think we definitely need more affordable housing, we need mixed housing types, that's a perfect place for as far as access.

for density, but I also have an issue with if we're creating this new density and infrastructure, if we don't have the infrastructure to maintain it, we don't wanna have unsafe projects.

My interpretation of the safety concerns were because, well, number one, Stirling Avenue, because it has no sidewalks.

The reason staff, I think, and maybe Matt can speak to this, but I think the reason staff had that concern and staff report was because the funding agreement for the sidewalks is not actually part of the zoning application that Matt reviewed.

So I think looking just at that zoning application, he couldn't say that dribbling would be made safer.

taking the sidewalk funding agreement into account, I think that position is probably very different.

Morgan Court is a little different.

One of the reasons that traffic and fire rescue staff are requiring that connection is for safety.

Traffic on that road, it is a narrow road.

Anybody who lives there has safety concerns anytime any additional cars are put on a road they live on.

And that's understandable.

So one of the things I mentioned earlier, which we should discuss further, whether it's now or at the site plan stage before the site plan comes back to y'all, it doesn't matter to me, is whether that should be a one way road or whether staff wants to reconsider and just make that emergency access.

But I'm kind of at the mercy of the city ordinances and the staff requirements on that.

Well, I guess the clarification would be yes, staff reviewed this in the context of a land use decision.

Different departments within the city were looking at the sidewalk agreement.

I would say I don't think staff's recommendation would change unless there was a

Thank you.

Last thing was, are we in comments or only questions?

Questions, please.

Okay, I'm done.

How to put this into question.

I'm looking at, on page 64, the tree survey, and I'm going to push back on what I've heard so far.

There are 11 mature, beautiful trees along Stribling Avenue.

48-inch ash, which probably not long for this world anyway, 28-inch beech, 28-inch maple, 24-inch oak, 18-inch oak.

What is being proposed now is that all these be torn out and to put in saplings.

and I want to push back.

I'm starting my eighth year attending these meetings and I'm sick and tired of having beautiful large trees be torn down because of bureaucratic standards that get applied cookie cutter-ish without regard to the quality of the site and uniqueness of these sites.

and here we are with a PUD that by definition is supposed to allow creativity in saving some of these aspects of the natural site.

Why can't we get creative and figure a way to keep these trees and maybe run the sidewalk behind them

put in different materials for the sidewalk that it doesn't require the trees to be ripped out, relocate the utilities, do something to protect these trees, keep that aspect of scribbling and move ahead with this project.

Hearing no other voices, I'll try.

Thank you, Charlie.

And I'm not an engineer.

And I agree with you on a lot of this.

And I have to go home every day to a forest ecologist in my home.

So everything I do, I put an extra little lens on it to make sure I can still go home every night to my wife.

The trouble with what you're saying is that PUDs do not allow modifications to the dimensional requirements of the code.

We used to do that back in the early 2000s when PUDs were first kind of being tried out, but then that got tightened down so that by doing a PUD, I can't change what the required street width is, even though I could

I could set different setbacks on the lot.

I can't say, well, the sidewalk will only be four feet or the utility easement will only be eight feet.

Those are not allowed changes through PUD.

Another thing that's a little bit more philosophical answer to your question is a lot of the places that we really love were places that were developed and replanted a long time ago.

North downtown, you know people see these big trees along with downtown and don't realize that if you look at historical photos.

It was clear.

So nobody wants to talk about waiting 50 years for a mature tree because they're beautiful right now.

But it's one of those trade-offs to providing new housing in a dense form because you really do have to use the upland areas of the site to the greatest extent to put that density in there.

I'm not making a value judgment here.

I'm not attacking your engineers necessarily.

I'm asking both the city engineers and your engineers to work together to figure out a way to save these trees.

I'm sorry, I just hope we're around in 50 years to be able to see the

And I'll tell you, the big beach tree right along the front, if you look at how the strip right-of-way is, the right-of-way juts in at our parcel.

So it's much narrower at our parcel.

And those trees, if you look at the, if you continue the right-of-way on that tree survey page you're looking at straight across, those trees would be in the road, if the road were consistent along there.

So I don't think, I'm not going to mislead you and say, we'll try to save those.

I don't think we can.

But the bigger trees, there's some 30 inch oak and 34 inch maples.

We'll definitely take an extra look at before any final site plans to do everything we can to preserve.

They have value to the neighborhood.

They have value to the development.

Ms.

Yeah, thanks.

I had a question about the connectivity.

It says there's a page and exhibit that talks about tying into city path towards Sunset Avenue, presumably that would go through Huntley.

Can you explain how that would be accomplished?

Yeah, absolutely.

So we do not own the property that runs all the way up to Striblin along the bike ped master plan proposed route for that trail.

But everywhere we do own, we are putting that multi-use trail in the location that it's called for on the bike ped master plan.

And stubbing it to the property line so that eventually it can go directly to Stribling.

If you're looking at the plan, it's kind of the bottom left corner of the plan there where we just don't own that parcel.

In the meantime, we are connecting a paved path from that bike pad master plan trail location up to our new streets so that

All right, thanks.

I've got a few different questions, but I hope they'll be rapid fire.

So first, private street staff raised concerns about their connectivity or lack thereof.

Obviously, they're stubbed out to give access.

My question is, if the adjacent property owners in the future want to extend those streets in order to continue this pattern of development onto their properties,

Granted, they have critical slope problems of their own on one side.

Gosh, that is a stumper.

I have not thought of that.

The way the preliminary plat looks right now, the private road goes all the way to the property line.

So though it would be private, there are physical opportunities to connect it.

We'd have to give some thought to making sure that there's a reasonable way to deal with the ownership.

since they're private.

If those could be converted to public at that time, that maybe is the best way to do that.

The connecting on our request as we convert to public, that's a process.

OK.

Next question.

Right now they're envisioned as for the residents of the development.

If that is something that the commission and council thinks would be a good pocket park, we gotta talk about maintenance obligations.

It wouldn't be fair for the residents of this development who pay to maintain those to have 500 residents from the rest of the city come and use them and have their maintenance costs goes up.

I mean, I would disagree that it would be unfair.

I don't think people are going to come from across the city to see a pocket park.

Maybe some of these residents along Tribbling might go take a look.

To me, I mean, that seems reasonable, despite it being privately owned.

Next question, construction sequencing.

So where do you see the, like, we've heard concerns about construction traffic in relation to the development of these sidewalks.

So at what point do these sidewalks get developed in this plan?

How much construction traffic is going to be going along before that happens?

My hope is that the sidewalks could be done first while we are building infrastructure in the PUD.

So while there are bulldozers on site grading for roads and installing utilities, which doesn't involve a lot of truck traffic, it's when the home building starts that the truck traffic really picks up.

and in order to do that there is some reliance on the city to have a full plan in place for those sidewalks and be ready when that time comes.

We got plenty of time because it's going to take at least another year, year and a half to get a final site plan approved for this site just to do all the engineering and resolve all the details.

So there's plenty of time to get that design done but it does rely some on the city to

OK, for affordable for sale units, are you planning on collaborating with Habitat?

And then you said earlier that there would be some equity recapture, but then also said that it didn't exclude people from gaining that equity from homeownership.

Right.

So we haven't picked an affordable housing partner.

There's two models that are kind of predominant here for homeownership.

One is the land trust model.

And this probably is not really for you, but for other people who are listening who may not be familiar with it.

The land trust model, as I understand it, takes the land out of the equation, the land trust owns the land, the home buyer owns the home, and then they have a shared equity in the property whenever that buyer resells it.

So I'm making this up, but I think it's around 50-50.

So let's say they buy a home for 200,000, and then a few years down the road, they sell it for 300,000.

and Kumbaya gets $50,000 of the equity and the Land Trust gets $50,000 of the equity to reinvest in another unit so the affordability is not lost overall but it may not be that specific unit.

Habitat's model, and I hope I don't butcher this, is a little different but they do the same sort of thing with a

Forgivable second mortgage.

So they have one mortgage on the property for whatever the home buyer can afford based on their income, and then a second mortgage for the remainder.

And that second mortgage is forgiven gradually over 30 years.

So if a person were to own the home for a full 30 years, then all of that equity becomes the homeowner's.

But if they sell it in five years, which they can do, they can sell it at market rate in five years,

then I think Habitat would probably get a large portion of the equity back out of that house.

The home buyer would get some, not nothing.

They'd certainly get whatever value appreciated, but they wouldn't get the forgivable mortgage forgiven.

So that also assures that affordability is maintained.

If not in that unit, it can be reinvested to another unit.

Yeah, I think it does.

Share, do I have one more question in me?

Very short, please.

All right.

I see you're doing about 73% onsite treatment and 27% nutrient credits.

Potentially some sacrifice of otherwise usable open space.

It may compromise similar recreation area to turn it into biofilter.

Those numbers are not fully engineered.

We hope we can do better than that, but we've kind of set that as a minimum because we don't want to come back and say, oops, we told you this and now we're not doing that.

If we do over that, we don't have to come back to you and hold our head in our hands.

So there are opportunities to do better.

And we will do the best we can to not have to buy any nutrient credits.

Just one, going back to the sidewalk discussion on Stribling.

Maybe it's for the applicant, maybe it's for staff.

The disparity in the cost estimates, did Southern Development, did that estimate include right-of-way acquisition or is that strictly like construction?

Yeah, Charlie, I can speak to that.

I believe the number you're citing, Charlie, includes a 20% contingency fee.

We did break down the acreage or, in this case, the square footage of each of the right of way takes necessary from each of the parcels.

We did not include an estimate on that right of way, but we did include a healthy contingency on our

Thanks.

I have no questions.

Likewise.

Thank you.

Thank you, Chair.

And at this time, if you'd like to address the commission on matters pertaining to 240 Stripling Avenue, please click your raise hand icon.

Or if you're joining us by phone, press star nine.

We'll call on you in the order of hands raised and you will have three minutes for comment.

First speaker is Marga Buchera.

And you are on with Planning Commission.

Yes, I'm Marga Bushara.

Another question for me is, once I am surviving going down Stribling and hitting JPA and then wanting to cross JPA on the pedestrian crosswalk,

How many cars are not stopping there?

It is simply an impossible situation and many near misses were witnessed by many pedestrians.

There is never any police, nor is there police even checking on, speeding on, scribbling.

It is a zoo there.

And this cannot get better with a development of that size and magnitude that 240 struggling is supposed to be.

Another thing is, thank you very much Mr. Leandro for your concern of the tree.

I am for the trees, I'm walking that property on a daily basis.

There are beaches on the side as you stand in front of 240 Stribling, one beach especially on the left side which is very close to the friend to the neighbor's fence there.

I don't see any reason why that tree cannot be salvaged, although it is marked for being taken down.

It is a disaster.

The whole thing is a disaster.

Thanks for letting me vent and share.

Thank you.

Next, we have Jason Halbert followed by Chris Meyer.

Jason, you're on with the Planning Commission.

Thanks, Joe.

Thanks, Planning Commissioners, old friends on here.

I want to thank you all for your service, especially in this time.

It's a tough time for everyone.

I appreciate what you're all doing.

Hosea, I'm talking about you.

I'm seeing you and Lyle and others.

I'm the co-president of the Neighborhood Association.

We took a formal position with a 10-page letter to you all and City Council on this matter in September of 2020.

The concerns we've raised then still stand today.

I appreciate what Charlie and his gang have done.

I think they're trying.

I think you are trying.

I think there is a potential to find a solution here.

But there's a big but.

And Ms.

Dahl hit it on the head.

It's about safety on that street and at the JP intersection.

I know a lot of you have walked it.

I've walked it with some of you.

It is a serious problem.

And we have tried for six plus years to get city council to recognize this, amidst all the other concerns and all the other priorities, and I share those priorities with you.

But we have, it's fine on deaf ears.

I mean, I think people are hearing us, but there's just only so much money to go around.

I want to see these things happen.

I want to see affordable housing.

I've worked on it for decades, both personally and in my professional career.

And I want to see a good project developed, but it's just not there if you're going to go forward with this right now.

I think this needs more time.

We got the infrastructure agreement, which has not been vetted by anybody.

And your staff have told you that.

Mr. Dawson and others have told you it's not been vetted.

We got it last night.

So I think that the number one thing I want you to take away from my comments is that you should delay this vote at least for six months to have further discussions.

I am willing to invite all of you, including the developer, to the Oktoberfest annual meeting for the Fry Springs Neighborhood Association and have more discussion on this.

I think it needs more discussion.

There are a lot of issues here encapsulated in this project and the city needs to do its best to address them.

I saw some of our comments posted by Charlie in his presentation.

I want to be clear, that has not satisfied us.

So we are not satisfied by what's been offered here.

I won't go into more detail, but I will so privately with a few and the developer.

But I appreciate what you're trying to do here.

I think everyone is doing this in good faith.

I think we need more time and I would really strongly urge you to delay your vote.

And thank you.

Next, we have Chris Meyer, followed by Tom Cowgun.

Chris, you're on with the Planning Commission.

Thank you.

I'm speaking as a homeowner in Price Springs in my personal capacity, but who also happens to be on the Neighborhood Association Board.

I will note the Neighborhood Association Board has not taken a position on this most recent version, so I'm a little perplexed on the use of we by my previous speaker's pronoun.

I do want to be clear that I'm in favor of the 2-4 key struggling development being improved for the below reasons.

Our community as a whole and neighborhood needs more housing in general and a mix of housing.

This development with this mix of housing types for different income levels is needed not only for middle income home buyers, this elusive missing middle, but also for these starter and rental homes for low income families.

As the executive director of a growing nonprofit whose workforce serves this community, middle income and workforce housing where our current and future staff can live without having to commute 20 to 30 minutes one way is not only important for the organization's continued growth, but for my employees' quality of life, the fight against climate change because of less commuting and transportation emissions associated with that, and building energy and generational wealth.

I also consider city finances and look at a piece of property that at the moment generates only $10,000 a year in property taxes and with the potential of this development to generate $445,000 a year.

More funding that can be used to fund our schools, make infrastructure improvements, improve our public transportation systems, and fund other needs our community has.

I do recognize there will be micro-level negative impacts to those living on striveling because of traffic increases.

However, the developer's offer of, again, the bridge loan of $2 million and increase in property tax revenue should provide the funding necessary to make the pedestrian road improvements to struggling and mitigate additional traffic.

Am I happy about more vehicle trips on the southern end of JPA where I live?

No, not really.

But the minor increase of traffic volume doesn't, in my opinion, outweigh the larger benefit to our community that this development would provide.

I'm also very clear-eyed that this development in itself is not going to solve the lack of housing and especially workforce or affordable housing for our community.

However, while it is not sufficient in itself, it is definitely necessary in order to make an impact as no one project is going to solve it.

My fear is that the developer will be denied and build buy-write homes that will only be a third of the units, and that striveling street improvements will not be done.

Too many future residents of the proposed housing units lose in that scenario, and one of the last large pieces of land available for residential development in our community will be underutilized.

Thank you for taking my observations into consideration.

Thank you.

Next we have Tom Talgill followed by Casey Giele.

Tom, you're on with the Planning Commission.

I live on Stribling Avenue.

I've been a renter here for three years and a homeowner now for 14 years.

I welcome affordable housing on a scale that will fit the neighborhood.

I believe a smaller development, as currently provided for in the zoning plan, could be feasible.

especially with a small park or green space along the Stribling Avenue Road frontage, it would show respect for the character of the neighborhood as well as preserve some of the aged beech trees.

A smaller development by right development with road improvements might be able to safely handle moderately increased traffic.

But this larger request for massive development on a small street is disrespectful and reckless.

Safety is my concern.

Stripling Avenue would basically effectively be the only access to a development that would double the current number of dwellings on the street.

Sadly, a traffic study was done, sad because it was done in March 2020, two days after the lockdown began.

on a day when people had been sent home from schools and work told to stay indoors and were afraid to go to the grocery store.

The traffic survey company laid down pneumatic road tubes on Stribling Avenue.

Regardless of the motives of doing such a study at such a time, it would clearly be dishonest to make use of the results of that study.

As you know, Stripling Avenue is over a half a mile long with only a few feet of intermittent sidewalk.

It's narrow, often too narrow for two cars to pass each other.

It has curves and blind summits.

In normal years, both city and county school buses make their daily rounds.

Many residents walk or ride bikes to UVA.

And in the absence of any nearby parks, people use the street for recreation, runners, cyclists, people walking dogs,

parents pushing prams.

I encourage you to visit, walk the street, imagine logging trucks, cemented gravel trucks, then construction vehicles, and then twice the current traffic flow.

It will be clear to you that this request for a larger development is not a safe proposition.

And I think we all agree that housing is not affordable if it is not safe.

And thank you.

Next, we have Casey Giorelli, followed by Kevin Flynn.

Casey, you're on with the Planning Commission.

You have three minutes.

My apologies.

Hi, I just want to make a couple of comments.

One being that while I certainly applaud the affordable housing initiative within this project, I'm concerned greatly about the number of rental units over a 10-year period before they return to market value.

I think that in the long run, that will do little to impact the affordable housing issues within our community.

Two,

Like many others, I have concerns related to stribbling.

And we haven't spoken today at all about the intersection of stribbling and JPA.

And we know that it's very, very difficult right now for cars coming off of stribbling to make a left-hand turn.

And I know that this will become even more congested and more dangerous, both to cars and to pedestrians.

So whatever happens, I believe that we have to see stribbling fully

funded.

I appreciate the city's engineer saying that he felt that the cost would be over the $2 million point because when we think about all those vehicles moving heavy loads of cement and trees up and down that street, that street is in poor condition to begin with.

And I'm concerned that over time that street will even further degrade before we even make any improvements.

And thank you.

Next, we have Kevin Flynn followed by Genevieve Keller.

Kevin, you're on with the Planning Commission.

Hi, I just wanted to raise some concerns that I'm sure you've heard before and will hear again.

My first and biggest concern for this project is the safety on Stribling Avenue.

As you know, the road is narrow, does not have any sidewalk facilities except for in front of two parcels.

And due to the location near UVA and the bus stops, it seems to have a much higher number of pedestrians and cyclists than other roads in the city despite not having

Any project that would further the number of people using it really needs to address these concerns of the existing condition before adding to it.

Additionally, there are road safety hazards for motorists.

The road is an uneven width, so people are constantly swerving back and forth.

There are several blind curves and vertical curves due to the geometry of the road that need to be addressed before, again, we're about to double the amount of traffic on it every day.

And then furthermore, in addition to the capacity issues on Stribling itself, once it connects into the roadway network with the rest of the city, there's big concerns at the intersection with Jefferson Park Avenue.

On a daily basis, it can be very difficult to make a left turn out of there.

Sometimes it's even hard to make a right turn.

Adding more to address this would be a huge help.

And even though I've heard a lot of proposals to do things along Stribling, I've heard nothing to address this intersection, which is necessary to bring the proposed development into the city network as a whole.

And related to that, the proposed development is a really nice dense street grid, but I'm not necessarily sure that it makes sense to have that sort of density at what is functionally a dead-end street.

Even with an additional exit onto Morgan Court, all the traffic will basically end up on Stribling.

No one's going to, if you look at a map, no one's going to snake through Huntley to get back up to JPA.

That just doesn't make any sense.

So having this dense development on functionally a dead end just doesn't necessarily make sense with the existing infrastructure.

And if it's going to be approved, the infrastructure needs to be upgraded to support it before any of that can happen.

Thank you.

And I believe Ms.

Sorry about that, I was muted.

Miss Keller followed by Leanna Midkiff.

Oh, thank you.

Congratulations tonight to Lyle and Liz, and many thanks to Hosea.

Super job of chairing.

You've brought a new level of cool to chairing from your stand-up desk.

I'm going to miss that.

I strongly support Jody's suggestion that you find ways to require the protection of specimen trees, especially street trees.

PUDs are for innovative plans of development, and it is more than time that PUDs are also for innovative plans for protection and preservation.

If you want the public to support new development, and density in particular, you must consider quality of life issues, and it should not just be replacement trees.

but tree preservation and perhaps endowments to replace them when they've outlived their natural lives in future decades.

So please find innovative ways to reinterpret or amend the PUD to accomplish this important initiative.

And finally, I have a question.

I know you don't have to answer it, but I would like to put it out on the table.

I don't know a lot about this kind of development, and I don't understand how the ADUs will be offered for sale.

And I wonder if you could clarify that.

Is this a sale that's separate from the sale of a purchase of a primary structure?

And if so, how will that be accomplished in terms of ownership?

Thank you very much for all you do.

Thank you.

Next we have Leanna Midkiff followed by Dawn Hunt.

Leanna, you're on with the Planning Commission.

Hi.

Good evening.

Thank you.

So many good, well-spoken folks, so I'm going to do my best.

I've lived in this neighborhood for 30 years.

I've raised my children on JPA.

It's always been a balance to have your stroller on a sidewalk on one wheel.

That was always something I had to accomplish.

Now that I'm older, I run sometimes on striveling.

Kind people stop their cars, so I don't have to jump into people's front yards.

It's that narrow.

And again, I won't repeat what everybody else has said about JPA because that intersection is just quite tricky at best.

I do worry about the trees.

I love walking through there.

It's beautiful.

I don't know of a single development in our area that's happened in the last 10 years where all the trees haven't disappeared.

They don't survive.

They can't survive all that digging at their roots.

They try.

I do believe people are trying, but it doesn't seem to be successful.

and some of these trees, you know, I have a tree that was a hundred years old.

It's just nothing can replace a hundred year old tree.

So I hope we can do things to keep them.

So my thought would be a smaller development.

I love the idea of affordable housing.

I've worked for 25 years with people with disabilities and finding housing for folks is important.

What I noticed is there's no bus stops anywhere near this place for folks that do have

limited incomes and maybe don't have cars to be able to even hop on the bus.

They're going to have to go all the way down to the other end of JPA or down to Cleveland.

So if this is truly something that you all want to embrace, then let's look at that as well.

Thank you.

Next, we have Dawn Hunt followed by William Abrahamson.

Dawn, you're on with the Planning Commission.

You have three minutes.

And Don, you'll have to unmute.

OK, and next we have William Abrahamson.

William, you're on with the Planning Commission.

Thank you very much for everyone on the commission for your time and attention.

One thing that struck me today is there's really two applicants at the table tonight.

One, of course, is Southern Development, spoken eloquently by Charlie.

The other is the city.

There's two parties to this agreement.

If the city was sitting at the table and their project manager was there, I've asked them many questions about their process.

And as a resident, we have two partners that we're looking to work with.

One is the Southern, one is the city.

What is the process going to look like for this dry sidewalk redesign?

When was the last time the city did a half mile side streetscape work on its own without an outside consultant or B dot money?

So what do we as residents have to look forward to as a process?

The comprehensive plan is proposing medium density from JPA extended to sunset.

Is that or is that not going to account for street side parking?

What kind of traffic calming measures can we look forward to?

These are part of the discussion that we have many questions about.

So I'd encourage you all to look not at just the application in front of you right now, but to be optimistic and forward-looking of what does this process look like for our community?

Can we take some more time to review it and get the city's feedback of what this would look like?

The second thing I'd like to raise is flexibility on the design team.

The renderings they showed showed wonderful attention to the views and the heights of the buildings.

And yet the many, many rows of townhomes appear to be causing difficulty for preserving trees, some of the road design,

and especially pushing that LOD farther and farther out to the critical slopes.

Is it possible for additional levels of design, higher height or density, different building type, closer to scribbling to allow more flexibility in that plan?

Just a thought, that's something for the city staff and the developer to come back with, but it could add opportunities.

The last item was simply about the access to the Moore's Creek.

And I was curious if, I didn't hear it say in this time, if that was an easement in partnership with the Rivanna Trails, or if that was simply a public easement from the developer.

And thank you.

Next, we have Catherine Bruse followed by Paul Josie.

Catherine, you're on with the Planning Commission.

Good afternoon.

Can everybody hear me OK?

Perfect.

Thank you so much for taking the time again.

I've been on a couple of these meetings and I'll say it again.

I think the scope is too large for the space.

We're all about affordable housing.

I work in higher education and closing achievement gaps is part of all of the things that we do.

But if we're not setting our new residents up for success, I think we're failing the system just like we would be anywhere else.

The affordable housing piece, I'd like to mention that the last two affordable houses that were set aside in Huntley just sold for over $500,000 this year.

That was a plan, obviously, that went wrong, and it's impacting, I think, all of us around here, right?

We want affordable housing, but if the rules and regulations aren't set in place, it's not going to be helpful.

Traffic patterns.

We've talked about Stribling.

I think we've all beaten the drum on Stribling.

We've talked about JPA.

Ms.

Russell has talked quite a bit about Morgan Court, which we certainly appreciate.

I'm on the top of Huntley.

So as you're coming through Morgan Court up to Huntley, have you been on the side of Sunset when it connects up to Jefferson Park Circle?

That is a steep hill.

There are blind spots everywhere.

And if traffic is going to be coming through Huntley, it's eventually going to hit Sunset, which then hits JPA and the Circle.

And it is extremely dangerous.

I have a stroller and three dogs.

I would gladly take video of what the traffic patterns are like on either road, but I can't because of the distractions and the safety concerns that already exist.

I also feel like Jason's suggestion earlier about holding off the vote would be helpful if we're going to put affordable housing in where people need to get to work and daycare.

Even with sidewalks, which doesn't seem affordable for the city, bus stops are not close by.

And I just, again, I don't think after two years of negotiations that we're there yet in order to be able to vote on this.

And I think pretty much everybody in the Huntley community would stand in front of Shribbling 240 with all of our dogs and kids and have something to say if this continues without better consideration moving forward.

So I know that this is a big project.

We appreciate your listening to us, but I think more consideration needs to be discussed.

Thank you.

Next, we have Paul Josie followed by Sharon Stone.

Paul, you're on with the commission.

All right, thank you very much.

My name is Paul Josie.

I purchased a home and lived on Stribling for 13 years.

And I know the street very well.

And this is one of the last sites to be developed.

This is the last major site to be developed.

It's a 100 foot drop.

It's a very steep site.

There's a reason why it hasn't been developed by Wright.

There's a reason why they're trying to get as much density as they can on the site.

where they proposed trail connections are really truly just you know bottom of swale sort of over a utility easement it's not really a level trail it's a very steep site and you know anyway there's lots of issues with the site and I appreciate Mrs. Keller's points about innovative tree preservation and innovation currently the design

As it looks like it shows, it's hard to see without a real true plan, but the way the grading is, the tree preservation extents aren't really saving many trees.

They're sort of cutting in as much as possible.

So I don't really, but that's a side.

I think the main point I want to get to here is the safety of the existing residents on Stripling Avenue.

Stripling Avenue, if you know, it's over 80% renter occupied.

This is a low and low middle income street of residents who live here.

We're putting safety at risk with the numbers here, when the sidewalk is going to come, if it's going to come.

Who's going to allocate that money?

You know, there's a lot of concerns.

When we left, you know, having my kids near striveling on the street itself, it's terrifying.

There are cars going fast all the time.

And having watched Huntley develop over 15 years of development, there were endless construction traffic.

People who do not live there driving fast all the time when they're arriving, and when at lunchtime, in the evenings, when they're leaving.

I mean, it is an unsafe street.

As everyone's said this, you know, this is essentially a community street, but the people who are impacted the most are the low income people who are living on the street currently.

So my recommendation is, you know, to hold off until there's a clear sidewalk plan and a schedule and a budget for that sidewalk, because there's no budget presented right now that seems clear of what the real cost of this would be to get this development.

Thank you.

And thank you.

And next we have Sharon Stone followed by Neil Goldsboro.

Sharon, you're on with the Planning Commission.

Hello.

I live at the very, very end of Stripling actually in the county on Nob Hill Circle.

I won't mention anything about Stripling and JPA that hasn't already been mentioned, but I haven't heard anything yet about Stripling Extended, which is the gravel road that comes in from near the Fontaine Research Park and comes up to the end of Stripling.

Anybody who lives at the end of Stripling knows that people who live at that end take it as a shortcut.

And I don't know, a couple of years ago, VDOT paved it not very well without any drainage.

And it has turned into sort of an island with a bunch of holes and parts of the roads are collapsing.

And it's more like a golf cart track.

And I haven't heard anything about a plan to address that because everybody who lives at that end and probably people in this development will use that road.

So I'd like to know more about what the plan is for that.

That's all I've got.

Thank you.

Next, we have Neil Goldsboro.

Neil, you're on with the Planning Commission.

Can you hear me?

Good.

I'm a resident of Huntley and no one's spoken, only one person has spoken a little bit about the hill up Sunset Avenue by the Seventh Day Adventist Church.

My traffic pattern is that I try to avoid the intersection at Stribling and JPA.

So I take the hill up Sunset to get out on a JPA and it's a whole lot easier and a whole lot safer.

If, as you all have said,

Traffic is going to quadruple or quintuple when this development comes in.

Then there'll be other people like me who will decide we're going to go up Sunset Avenue's hill to get out in the JPA.

And that is a very dangerous hill and a curve, as you've heard.

More dangerous, I would think, in some ways than scribbling.

At least scribbling has a line of sight if you're going up and down that hill.

So you may want to look ahead because there'll be lots of people who will take the safest, best, easiest, quickest way

and find themselves going up that hill on Sunset.

So you may wanna think about doing something with that, what I don't know, but just be thinking ahead as to what the traffic will do.

They probably won't go out of Morgan Court, but go down Huntley and up Sunset Avenue like I do.

And no other hands are raised currently, but if you'd like to address the commission on matters pertaining to 240's Tribbling Avenue, please click your raise hand icon.

Or if you're joining us by phone, press star nine.

We do have a couple more hands.

Thank you very much.

To my great dismay, I've lived over here in this neighborhood for

over 15 years.

And I appreciate, I used to, I'm gonna put quotes around this, the Sylvan character of this property.

And the 240 applications refer to the Sylvan character of the property and how they're gonna retain it.

And I have to say that is just utterly untrue.

As Jody pointed out, they're taking down all the significant trees and the riparian buffer will be impacted by the stormwater retainage.

And I walk these trails all the time.

I own property adjacent to the supposed trail, which is a utility easement.

And the trails down by Moore's Creek are in absolutely terrible condition due to unmitigated erosion from Huntley because Huntley was

poorly planned and poorly approved by the people in power at that time.

And I look forward to maybe not repeating that by adding to insult to injury with the Cars Grove 240 properties.

And it seems like my big lament is that this seems like a fait accompli.

Everybody's only arguing fine points.

I think in the big picture it's the wrong product in the wrong location and it does not serve the community and it does not meet many of the bullet points of the commission's stated goals and I suggest you carefully read the letter I sent this morning, though I had difficulty doing that, and

because I spent hours on it and just see that this is not the right product in the right location and it will not enhance the quality of life for the people who live in this neighborhood.

It will only decrease the quality of life.

Thank you, Mr. Quarles.

We were able to connect with Don Hunt.

Don, you're on with the Planning Commission.

Okay.

I think, can you hear me now?

Yes.

Okay, perfect.

Sorry, I'm not a techie.

Didn't know what I was doing with that.

I live at 301 Stripling.

I've been here for over 20 years with my husband and walk all the time in the neighborhood.

basic question I guess that my understanding of the comprehensive plan the current and the proposed new one that have a density for this neighborhood which is totally different and much lower than the density the proposed density for the 240 property so that's really confusing to me the other issue is from

Well, there's many issues.

The safety issue on the road is of high concern in the cost, the differences, and what we've heard from different people about what that's going to cost.

And I would think my husband was in construction, and they said usually you need to figure it tight and then double it.

And so I think that we need to look at probably the higher levels

the higher amounts for those that proposed sidewalk improvements, et cetera, et cetera, on Stribling.

Also, I want to reference something that the Fry Spring Neighborhood Association sent with their memo last September, I think it was, 2020.

They quote, I think it's an EPA assessment, and they quote the scores for 240 Stribling Avenue

for walkability, which is 19, this is currently 19 out of 100.

And the score for the transit accessibility is 28 out of 100.

And the score for the bikeability, I guess you would call it, is 33 out of 100.

So I just, all those numbers are so abysmal.

And then if you quadruple those, the numbers, if you quadruple the number of people who are gonna be using, scribbling,

I would think those numbers would go down to almost zero.

So those are my concerns.

I do appreciate all the service and the time that you all put into this, and please consider those things.

Thank you.

We have one other hand raised, Andrea Hawkes.

Andrea, you're on with the Planning Commission.

Yeah, hi.

Thanks so much for taking my call, I guess.

I have opened a Dropbox folder, I guess.

I have a file called Stribbling Disasters.

I'm gonna invite anyone who wants to contribute photographic or video content of what's actually happening on Stribbling if you guys don't want to actually come visit and see the safety issues yourselves.

My email, I'll just, I don't know, I'll just say it right now.

So if you want to email me, it's andreahawks at gmail.com.

And I have a giant file of photographs that depict the hazards on Stribbling Avenue.

Thank you.

Last call.

We have John Marshall.

John, you're on with the Planning Commission.

Hey, good evening, everybody.

I'm John Marshall.

I'm a homeowner on Stripling Avenue.

I really appreciate your diligence in carefully considering this PD application.

It sounds like we're all aware of the need for a sidewalk on Stripling, but I do want to reiterate how difficult it would be to install a sidewalk on Stripling and its high likelihood to cost way more than $2 million.

The street is very narrow.

People's houses are very close to the street in some places.

People's yards slope steeply down from the street to their houses in some places.

So there can be literally nowhere to put a sidewalk without pushing people's driveways into their houses or eliminating their parking area altogether.

You also have to build up people's front yards, cut down several old hardwood trees, and then you'd also have to figure out what to do with stormwater, which there is nowhere convenient for the water or its plumbing to go.

So I think it's a bit of a trick for the developer to say, here's $2 million you can use after you approve the PUD.

because once you start engineering the sidewalk, you're likely going to find it will cost several more million dollars if it's even possible.

The land drops off a cliff to a railroad track on one side of the street, and there are critical slopes down to other neighborhoods on the other side.

So it really might not be feasible to manage the stormwater at all.

Given all of that and the numerous safety concerns that have already been brought up, I do highly encourage and ask you to wait for a sidewalk to come first and then consider the PUD.

Otherwise, the city might have its arm twisted into spending several million dollars it wasn't expecting to spend.

to make the very complex sidewalk and water drainage system.

Or even worse, the development would happen and then you find that the sidewalk is not feasible or affordable, then you'll have a massive safety problem because you will have doubled the traffic on a street that is already known to be unsafe.

I think that typically safety infrastructure comes first and then the construction.

I ask that you follow this precedent and please do not jeopardize the safety of our residents, the children, the seniors, and our pets that very often walk in the street.

I feel that it would simply be irresponsible to approve development without safe sidewalks coming first.

Lastly, I want to give a sincere thank you to Mr. LeHindro for caring about the old trees.

The residents of Stripling certainly share that sentiment.

That street has a unique charm and historical character that comes in large part from those trees.

It would definitely be a huge loss for all of us to lose those trees.

So thank you again for your care in them.

That's all for me.

Thank you.

And thank you.

Yes, next we have Stephen Cole.

Stephen, you're on with the Planning Commission.

Hey, how's it going, everyone?

My name is Stephen Cole, and I live at 238 Scribbling, adjacent to 240.

My concerns mirror all of those here, to include the mature tree removal, erosion concerns due to slope waivers, safety, and lack of public transport.

The mature trees are endangered and aren't only just along Scribbling, but also the trees that are on the property lines.

The plans proposed goes against what the tree commission fights for, which is maintaining the tree canopy and fighting against its constant degradation as represented by their most recent report to the council, which I believe was last year.

Erosion is currently a major issue along Morse Creek due to the critical slope waivers that were granted to Huntley leading to what is now a swampy area, increased silt going into Morse Creek, and a sinkhole that is developed between Morse Creek and Huntley along the trail.

Also with the current water drainage issues on Stribling, I personally had large amounts of water coming into my basement, like many residents on Stribling do, the water runoff as is, which cost me about $15,000 to address, and it's still not fixed.

In addition, the traffic study was done at a very unprecedented reduction in vehicle and pedestrian traffic during COVID, schools were closed, people sent home for work, restaurants and community resources closed, and many university students leaving the city.

I resonate and wholeheartedly agree with Jason's statement that this vote should be delayed at least six months to discuss it and take careful consideration.

I appreciate the time and hard work of all of you who have worked for the city and on the council in helping our community deal with this.

Thank you.

And thank you.

Thanks to all.

I believe we're ready for the commission to discuss this issue.

There is much about this that I like.

I like the fact that we will get a significant amount of affordable housing.

And I like the fact that we would get the infrastructure that we will not get if this is done by right.

And we will get for years if we wait until we can get it into our capital improvement plan.

and the scaling, the size, the density of the development doesn't bother me at all either.

But I think it could use a little more baking.

I think there would be value in sitting with the engineers, sitting with economic development people, Mr. Engel, and working out the details and logistics so that we know exactly what this is gonna look like

when we were ready to move on it.

Mr. Armstrong is right.

One without the other.

The PUD without the infrastructure won't work.

You've got to have them both.

And I'd like just like a little more baking to happen before we're asked to make a decision.

I'd like, again, more details on what the sidewalk's gonna look like, what it's gonna cost, the logistics of doing that, when's gonna happen, how it's gonna happen, so that the city, the city's staff and the developer can come back to us with a unified proposal, and then we can vote on it.

I do believe that if a little more thought is given to this,

The issue raised by Mr. Leondre could also be addressed.

I think if a little more thought is given to this, then my worry about what's going to happen to Morris Creek could be, could be, could be given a little more thought and make a clearer articulation of the protection of the environmental issues that might be made.

This is great.

And this is significantly better than anything we've seen as it relates to this.

But I,

I think a little more thought would be of value.

I'm not willing to wait six months to do this because I think we're near.

Ms.